CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Health care services are one of the cardinal services any government must provide for its citizenry. In both the developed and developing countries, a large proportion of the nation’s wealth is channeled to health. For instance, the world health reports (2005) gave Nigerian government expenditure on health as a percentage of her gross domestic products (GDP) for the year 2001 to be 5.3 percent, year 2002 to be 5.0 percent and year 2003 to be 4.7. This is to buttress the fact that the Nigerian government health care service expenditure are very significant in relation the the gross domestic product. But surprisingly our health care delivery have been next to zero, this as many say have led to medical tourism. No organization functions well without adequate funding and our hospitals aren’t le out. Every public hospital which receives funds against approved annual work plans shall maintain separate bank accounts and separate books of accounts in respect of funds received for its programs. The mission of every public hospital in Nigeria is to serve the health care needs of people in its communities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The task of its medical sta is to care and to cure. The extent to which a hospital achieves this objective depends to a greater extent on the application of basic hospital financial rules, guidelines and accounting policies. Public teaching hospitals in Nigeria are medical centers that provide clinical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are oen ailiated with medical schools and work closely with medical students throughout their period of matriculation, and especially during their clerkship (internship) years. Adequate redistribution of funds in public hospitals is mostly handled by the government and this goes through a lot of procedures and processes. In ensuring eective allocation of funds across departments for the smooth running of hospitals, the budget for each department mush have to be reviewed to ensure equity and transparency in the allocation of recourses. This budget examination would also help in monitoring these funds when they are eventually deployed. In many countries, the Ministry of Health pays directly for some resources used in public hospitals (e.g stationery, vehicle maintenance, salaries). However, sometimes, the ministry cannot determine the specific spending levels by hospital. In this case, one will need to estimate the allocated amounts in line items oneself, preferably, in consultation with oicials at the hospital and the ministry.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The inadequate allocation of funds across departments of government or public hospitals has led to a whole lot of problems with our public health sector. Cases of fraud and over expenditure in our public hospitals has been a cause for concern, the general poor performance of public hospitals has led to medical tourism which has resulted in our country loosing substantial amount of money that would have improved our economy. Equally, cases of under-funding of our hospitals have been common especially in our government/public hospitals.